Procedural Generation Competition 2nd Place Winner: Dyson

by Emily Balistrieri on June 28, 2008 at 10:16 pm

This happy asteroid is on my team now

This game is seriously tripped out when you zoom way in and watch the plants grow. “Is it growing? I think so. I can’t tell. Is it getting bigger? It might be,” and then the little fireworks go off.

The game Dyson, by Alex May, Rudolf Kremers, and Brian Grainger for TIGSource’s Procedural Generation Competition, is a slick and pretty, real-time strategy game about colonizing an asteroid belt. Although your minions look like fruit flies, they are actually tiny mining machines that attack the eggy looking rocks like a pack of winged sperm.

As you plant more trees, you’ll produce more mecha-fly-sperm, and be able to gradually disseminate them throughout the belt. Highlighting an asteroid gives you detailed specs like attack power and core strength, which comes in handy both when attempting conquests and when waves of enemies start pouring in from beyond the fog of war.

This is only a partially zoomed out view. I’m losing!

In addition to just how pleasant the audio-visual experience is (and relaxing until the bad guys start swarming), the controls work really well, since the viewpoint moves while zooming in or out using the mousewheel or arrow keys to center on your pointer. I mean, how awesome would it be if Google Maps would do that?

Missed yesterday’s entry on the third place winner? Check it out here.

Source: TIGSource

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